Monday, March 21, 2011

Headlines - Monday March 21

Griftzilla is in India (and going on to Israel, birthplace of Jeebus) to try to earn some International street cred for the 2012 Goat Rodeo, you know, so she doesn't talk about Putin being in her back yard again.

So the Snowbillies arrive in New Delhi, check into their hotel, and Mooselini® decides to go do a little light shopping and heads to the mall, maybe with someone else's credit card, who can say.

The press is following her along in New Delhi, and reports that she is trying expensive leather jackets. She doesn't like the fit, and goes back to the hotel.

The press dutifully reports her day's activities, and suddenly Former First Dude Todd gets in their grill and a media blockout ensues, with claims of lame stream media bias. Now the press is left without a story and suddenly the meme starts that this conference that invited her now thinks instead of having a US heavyweight, it has a has-been. It's all too rich: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZzVH0qPZn4&feature=player_embedded

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JM Ashby: In God We Trust

Actually I don't, but the Republican controlled House of Representatives is highly offended by our lack of jesusness in this country.

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sponsored the legislation. It would encourage the public display of the motto in all public buildings, public schools and government institutions. [...]

"There is a small minority who believes America does not have the right to trust in God, who believes the United States should not affirm trust in God, and who actively seek to remove any recognition of that trust," Forbes said.

First of all, is this even constitutional?

But no, no one believes you should not have the right to worship as you see fit. Atheists and Agnostics do not want to tell you that you can't worship. What we do believe is that the separation of church and state exists for a reason, and that government has no business legislating religion. And I'm fairly certain that several of the Founding Fathers believed religion to be a heresy. Aren't Republicans all about emulating the Founding Fathers?

But hey, maybe if we re-affirm God as our nation's savior, he will prevent the next natural disaster from occurring which Republicans will leave us inadequately prepared for. Maybe that affirmation will prevent the government from shutting down this spring because we didn't defund healthcare for poor people. Hey -- maybe it will even lower the deficit!

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles north of the site of last April's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.

A helicopter crew and pollution investigators have been dispatched to Main Pass Block 41 in response to two calls to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills, said Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector New Orleans. [...]

About two hours later, another caller reported a much larger sheen -- about 100 miles long -- originating in the same area and spreading west to Cocodrie on Terrebonne Bay, Barnard said.

Yep. Because we need more awful shit happening at once.

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In terms of deficit spending, the Tomahawk missiles we dropped on Libya cost us around $63,728,000 or $569,000 per missile. But we have to cut spending on nutrition for pregnant women, and for the National Parks because deficits are evil.

Another proud product of Wasilla, Alaska, Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock has plead guilty to three counts of murder for killing Afghan civilians to pass the time when he wasn't killing the other kind of Afghans. But that's not all! Some of Morlock's comrades have also been charged with following his lead to murder these people, and doing so while on drugs. Usually, this would be just another "unfortunate murders in a murder zone of important murders" story, and everyone's eyes would glaze over, but now there are pixxx.

Specialist Jeremy Morlock and Private Andrew Holmes are shown holding up the head of a man identified by Germany's Der Spiegel newspaper as Gul Mudin, an unarmed Afghan they are accused of killing on January 15, 2010.

Whoops! The Army has apologized, though, so everything should be okay.

Many organisations with foreign staff, including the United Nations, ordered a "lockdown" on Sunday night and told employees to stay in their compounds, anticipating violent protests in response to the release, the Guardian newspaper reported.

We can be proud that the recent high-school grads we arm with expensive weapons, ship off to a foreign land for the first time in their lives, and tell to exhibit the best ethics in determining which brown people they're allowed to kill are just mature enough that the photos they take posing with the heads of people they murdered are not also sexts of themselves. This Wasilla gentleman kept it in his pants. [Al Jazeera/Reddit

Jeremy's sister and Bristol Palin are BFFs.

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It's like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's still worth noting that the cable news Japan coverage was especially bad:

In one taped segment (though apparently not initially intended for air), [Soledad O'Brien] gets word that they need to move out of the area she's in. Then she panics and yells that a wave is coming and she starts running (all of this being filmed). By the time she reaches high ground in a nearby house, the camera looks out to see nothing but dry land as far as you can see.

Panic much? (Worse, you'd think CNN would burn that video, but no – it re-aired it). In studio, Piers Morgan was having a good show on Monday until – wait for it – he interviewed Yoko Ono about how she felt seeing the Japanese carnage.

I watched a bare minimum of Japan coverage on cable, and while I agree that Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta standing around on a roof in Tokyo was a waste of a live feed, Rachel Maddow, as usual, did a good job reporting from her studio.

Jill: But I'll bet they can name every D-lister who's on Dancing With the Stars this season.

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Another State Department truth-teller forced out. "US Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual has resigned amid a row over leaked diplomatic cables in which he doubted Mexico's ability to tackle drug gangs. The dispute flared last month when Mexican President Felipe Calderon accused Mr Pascual of "ignorance". He said the US cables, released by Wikileaks in December, had harmed ties. The US is backing Mexico's war against drug-trafficking with more than $1bn (£600m) in equipment and training. The two countries have also increasingly been sharing intelligence in a bid to tackle the drug gangs as violence continues to take a heavy toll in Mexico, with more than 34,000 killed since late 2006. It emerged earlier this month that the US has been sending unarmed surveillance drones over Mexico to gather information on the major drug traffickers."

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Creepy: Indie filmmaker Kevin Smith brought his new film Red State, which was inspired by the hateful antics of the Westboro Baptist Church and the Fred Phelps clan to Kansas City last week. The audience was what was so creepy -- with members of the Phelps clan in the audience (okay, they bailed after 15 minutes, but most of the audience didn't know that) they cheered and whooped and hollered and carried on like KU just won the NCAA tourny with a three-pointer at the buzzer when members of the cult in the film meet a violent end. As much as we hate them, we just want them mocked and ridiculed, we don't want them martyred.

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Bill Maher: 'Governing this country with Republicans is like rooming with a meth addict.'